A number of devices and apparatuses have been patented that may be used to make dowels and shafts of various types, including tapered shafts, usually from wooden work stock. There are also devices for shaving, e.g., dowels, to custom fit them. These ordinarily require the use of a lathe for rotating the work piece, and usually make use of a rigid frame called a longitudinal way or bed with a driving head with a driven chuck at one end and an idler tail head or tail stock at the other end. Usually, there is also provided a tool rest that mounts on the way or bed and is movable along the way or bed. As an example, there is the apparatus of Johnson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,771,392, who describes a tool rest and tool holder, but not means for quickly and conveniently moving the tool holder along the longitudinal way, and especially not in a reproducible manner from work piece to work piece.
None of the patented devices, so far as is known presently, provides adequate means for easily and accurately controlling the taper of the work piece, especially of a shaft longer than several inches, and also lacking is means for conveniently keeping the work piece centered under the leading edge of the cutting blade at all times while being worked. The device of Lippolt, U.S. Pat. No. 4,497,352, appears to make some provision for approximate centering of the work piece as it is forced into the unsymmetrical V-shaped groove of the stationary block, but the provisions for tapering are not very convenient to carry out in practice, and not quickly done.
The patents to Hilton, U.S. Pat. No. 3,229,731; Sprague, U.S. Pat. No. 2,913,019; Zemrowski, U.S. Pat. No. 2,848,020; and Durgin, U.S. Pat. No. 232,634; each describe devices for turning shafts in which a support bar or a second blade serves as a spacer defining the diameter of the shaft obtained, with adjustment means. But the adjustment means are not easily adjusted so that is it neither easy nor convenient to make a tapered shaft, and certainly not quickly.
Other turning tools are described by Gifford, U.S. Pat. No. 68,064 and Webber, U.S. Pat. No. 14,173.
There is also a need to provide apparatus for making tapered shafts up to at least three inches or more in diameter that is not only convenient to use, but modest in cost, and, portable if desired, especially for the making of shafts of wood or other light turnable material up to at least an inch in diameter and up to about six feet in length or longer, and also, to make all such shafts reproducibly, if desired.